


small machine

by ferrassie



Category: Cobra Starship, The Academy Is...
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-31
Updated: 2010-10-31
Packaged: 2017-10-12 23:52:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/130527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferrassie/pseuds/ferrassie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>fingers crossed and gabe's hands going behind william's back. pieces of blood-rushed faces from the couch. vicky upside-down with her legs crossed, ends of her hair touching the wooden floor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	small machine

  
  


**one**  
**a.** fingers crossed and gabe's hands going behind william's back. pieces of blood-rushed faces from the couch. vicky upside-down with her legs crossed, ends of her hair touching the wooden floor.

her gum pops.

okay, that kind of –- hey! hurts. gabe, no seriously, don't. fuck. (teeth). so cold under his shirt. chin knocks into his shoulder. legs tied up on the floor. vicky uncrosses hers briefly before resituating them.

"are you going to start pulling his hair soon." (how can it even be a question when she says it like that?)

gabe loses and gains a smile all at once. his nails scratch down the open skin at william's neck. william stares back at him from underneath his bangs. the corners of his lips turn up and and he pins gabe to the floor.

carpet burn. kiss burn.

whatever.

 

**b.** purple sleeves cuffed around wrists. pushed back (pushed back). holds the gold meshed metal to his lips. lets out hot air. the pink bounces back at him –- whether it's the open mouths of the microphones or girls –- from across the floor. washes of technicolour behind his outstretched arms, graphing wings to his back. the kids see it.

ill-shadowed necks of ( )tars. he wears sunglasses in natural and artificial light. gravity pulls the frames into a slow trace towards the floor. backlit and fucked up with lipstick. gabe keeps getting too close to fans.

"hey, ry, what do you think of this colour?"

all the patterns make it hard to focus. he's so fucking distracting (this is interchangeable). finally stops when gabe takes a break to drink from a warm waterbottle.

(fingers stained neon under the lights. dissolve back into his skin. eyes mirrored everywhere. colour originates from him. william fitting greyscale into the crowd).

 

**two**  
**a.** he dreams younger when he sleeps. the first glimmers of mike (and the audio breaks in, talking shit). the pictures like patchwork that never stay sewn together for very long. butcher's naked back before the tattoo, shoulder muscles flexing. videotape footage by courtney. it's like someone turns off a tv.

a voice on the dictaphone. tom yelling, tom laughing, beats of silence. a ticking clock that drops into the sound of drumsticks. high-hat and screams blending together seamlessly. william can't get any visual. little sparks of white fluttering at the edge of his peripheral vision. gabe's mouth. just feeling now. wet, wet under his jaw, his chin. it's dry when his hand unconsciously wipes at it. different tones of the same person saying his name over and over.

clicks. sticky tape recorder buttons. fumbling with cassettes. soundcheck. his voice laughs awkwardly back at himself. bassline. guitar feedback and tuning. the black outlines of techs moving, jon's lens picking up traces of light from overhead. the eyes of a cobra. his body surrounded with the smell of bright purple and sweat. high frequency rubber soles. someone coughs. another person shouts.

strobe flashes. moving towards gabe in fragments. he's gabe (sees himself walking towards himself / away from himself). left something behind. runs into the black to go get it. caught around the waist.

this is not a web and he is not a spider.

 

**b.** "my head and eyes and ears and teeth hurt."

sequined particles of dusted light reflecting off of darkened cheeks. it's still embarrassing when he sweats through the back of his jeans. someone will post these pictures on buzznet and it'll look cheaper. the show, his clothes, the layers of dirt (memory, etc.) from other cities.

someone told me the name of this place ten minutes ago.

(it's hard to be sorry).

 

**three**  
**a.** the first time ryland saw the cobra, he was drinking the juice from a glowstick.

the first time nate saw the cobra, it was after playing one too many games of halo in gabe's basement while drinking absinthe. he hasn't done math like that since.

the first time vicky saw the cobra, gabe had drawn a permanent-marker picture on the back a girl's cd. this still remains the only time she has ever seen it.

the first time alex saw the cobra, it wasn't exactly what he thought it was. neon-green pinpricks in the side of william's neck as he pulled alex up from the new york pavement.

okay, maybe he was wrong. okay, maybe the shots didn't help. nate didn't hold _his_ hair.

 

**b.** day in (day out), day out (day in). soundwaves breaching the air around them. gabe can't stand to listen when william's talking after a show. aural over-stimulation. spend their nights in silence unless there's something going on. parties with glass and aluminum, sticky tables, feet stuck underneath like gum. then it's a wall of white noise. alex squeezing himself in at the booth. this voice and this voice having a conversation about GUITAR AMPS and TEENAGE GIRLS.

maybe they're rushing it.

 

**four**  
**a.** the intertwining arms of non-prescription glasses. pale against the pale sheets that are stretched over the mattress like skin. the bed is so low to the ground that gabe stumbles into piles of shoes and clothes when he gets up. william presses his nose to the warm fabric where gabe slept. glasses leaving marks leaving redpink marks.

it's totally weird when he's still in the room.

gabe swings a bottle of jack like a pendulum. the just-lit sun projecting beams into its glass heart. warm and chemical (sincerity).

well, it is after ten o'clock.

the silent malevolent laughter. i'm gonna get you so fucked up because japanese tv sucks and we need some entertainment. gonna see the cobra, baby.

ithoughtialreadysawhim. ithoughtialreadysleptwithhim. only a little more sleep-mumbled. and, you know, not out loud. he's reaching out for the bottle and pulls gabe towards him by his shoulder. kisses him with morning breath. hey, you _are_ getting me drunk before noon.

flash, flash.

 

**b.** mid-afternoon. fingers tied together like chains and open lockets. stomach muscles pressed against the cold (faux-marble) bathroom counter. plastic and bristles in his mouth. sleep surrounds his core. when gabe moves, it shoots up to his throat. tastes it on the back of his tongue.

william is slumped over himself in boxers (wet hair cupped around his ears). penny-scattered red bruises on the wells of his collarbones. gabe talks around toothpaste spit. they're always bitching about being tired, bus call, tour managers.

"fuck him. wouldn't (spit) even let me drink. dude, nate was tanked."

in reverse behind william, gabe knows that he's only half-listening. always having to listen to everyone they don't know.

 

**five**  
**a.** clockwork heart with buzzing gold strings. william's asleep then awake, alseep then awake, alseep thenawake, alseepthenawake. overnight flying without any leg room and he's not sitting with anyone he could convince to let him crowd. he knows gabe would let him.

it's sort of like l-o-v-e when gabe puts his hand on the flight attendant's hip and asks her with a relaxed face for child-sized sodas. (gives william a look like it totally wasn't fair for gabe to get him wasted on the last night of tour. like they shared the headache).

it's more like l-o-v-e when william falls asleep with his head on gabe's sweat-stained shoulder. body detriorating into particles. altitude making william dizzy in his sleep. the clouds break, open, and swallow him up.

it's l-o-v-e when they touch down and sit at the luggage carousel because siska and butcher sent william a low-megapixel picture of gabe's lips to his forehead. eyes closed softly. (it doesn't matter who he's actually talking about).

it's love when gabe stays in chicago. (just a little bit, anyways).

 

**b.** they sleep in the back lounge on the floor. doesn't matter whose bus they're on (packed with five band members and crew). cobra today. plastic bags of tour trash (sometimes keepsakes) behind gabe's head. gave william the pillow out of his bunk. lack of everything. messy lines of white then brown.

never matters how _picturesque_ this time of day is. obnoxiously loud, "billlll," in intervals. wakes up with his lips quirked. reaches a hand across himself, pushes gabe's face away. it's way before the caffeine craving begins.

 

**six**  
**a.** he wears gabe's cobra ring because it started (almost) all of this. saying stupid things like, "going steady" and "my boyfriend" when no one is drinking. revelation? no, there's none.

but there is a ton of pictures vandalised with html. william doesn't know whether to like it or not. he likes gabe's smile in no. 437 and that one taken outside a hospital-like venue on the other side of the world where their backs are turned. less sentimental / more sentimental.

he's not sure.

 

**b.** the halos the trees make are spinning with william's outstretched arms. moments where the afternoon feels out of place. he can't find his shoes. there are camera clicks in the heat-thick air. slivers of a body through the trees. william slows and waits out the dizziness. warmth trickling down the back of his throat like cough syrup.

he doesn't hear anything move. trees soft and still. whispering, "who's there?" into the quiet. steps behind the brush. a picture.

he doesn't feel it in his hands, but he knows he tears it up.

 

**seven**  
**a.** g.

haunted by all the things i'd miss  
(it's me or him)

how we died, no one will ever know

("are you alone in here?" i heard the voice say so clearly)

who decides where everyone goes?

w.

 

**b.** a simple summer (love) affair. the sky's tinted a buttermilk yellow in the haze of junejulyaugust whispered fast like their time in the one place. routine: drive all night; check set times; eat and sleep and drink; play together. repeat. neither of them are ever quite clean. when the air conditioner breaks, no one sleeps right. sweat wetting the grip of his microphone.

fucking warped.

 

**eight**  
**a.** someone always draws attention to the fact that he shows his heart when asked. his first girlfriend liked that. dated him for a princess tiara, for the feeling of plastic teeth nipping at her scalp. william handled her like a pair of glass slippers.

they broke up. girls subsequently became less and less interested in all that (hand wave). they danced against him and william pretended that this wasn't the first time he had touched this satin dress. especially when her knees buckled and she threw up expensively cheap alcohol onto his shoes. her hands bracing his forearms.

("take what you love with you when you find a new home."

she can't even hear it over the claps of the bassline. she can't hear it on account that she's drunk out of her mind. william really doesn't care).

she gets it.

 

**b.** guys have done this to him too, but it's usually just backwashed jack down the back of his t-shirt when they sit too close together on the couch. not that's he's been any better. forgetting to duck to get into mike's bunk, bridge of william's nose flaring. falls asleep and then wakes up to rotted blood stains on mike's pillow. a shirt pressed under his nose. weeks worth of shows against his mouth. fucking gross.

a soft song plays in his head through the cotton and pulses behind his eyes. william's hand touches someone's shoulder. grips the sweater tightly while pushing the curtain back. gabe is placidly awake on the floor. hood and hat pulled up, smiling into a pair of jeans.

"dude you're so fucked. you bled all over carden's shit and me, too. but i don't care 'cause i love you, man."

william opens his eyes again; vision glazed over with green. neck stiff-sore. gabe is laughing at him. his eyes are tightly closed and his mouth is open without any sound. his shoulders jump up and down with invisible shocks of electricity.

william's voice cracks when he asks / says, "are you stoned? and your face is totally near the crotch of those jeans. and mike's totally a sweater."

 

**nine**  
**a.** he sees both of them pressed into sand. he ghost-feels gabe pinching his neck. purposefully.

because their bodies look lifeless dressed in blue. muted before-tones of the day. sun bleached out behind overcast and threats of rain. starched collar of an oxford wet around william's reincarnate self. sharing the same haircut, glasses, etc. skin milk-white what with all the _not breathing_.

gabe's beside him. loosened tie covered with granules in a non-pattern. looks as pale as william. gabe's own reincarnate body sticky with sand. they look dated. saltwater making the fabric of their clothes move.

this time, both the audio and visual cut out. william wakes up with his face pressed against ryland's shoes.

 

**b.** catalogue of tours. ones with fbr alumni, ones with midtown, ones in foreign places with the music of other bands dubbed over theirs.

(and maybe when they stand in catering together, it's not so bad. or when there are camera lenses around and they act a little fake. or maybe there's so much enthusiasm it comes across as fake. you can't really love it that much.

oh, yeah i can).

 

**ten**  
**a.** they breathe in tandem through lightning crashes of curses and drum machines. gabe kisses william. again and again and again and again until the storm slows to rain. their humidity is going to set it off again.

alex says to nate, "i'm totally seeing the cobra again."

 

**b.** flipped pov (floor-to-stage):

it's strange when he can disappear in a crowd because it never happens. but the kids look like him (all neon and non-matching), so he slips between them. stays to the side. people like dregs left in the bottom of coffee cups. stir-stick legs walking around a ceramic-coloured stage. it's kind of shallow, but they're the first thing gabe notices.

electric licks, fast-talking, punctuating moments with noise. everything is done in sequences. sometimes gabe wants to ask what's wrong with the t-shirt & jeans combination. because this is impressive. of course it is.

when william turns to the left, gabe notices the sweat soaking through the back of his shirt. navy blue just a little darker. arms like snapped elastic bands. cowards never look tired. (and maybe he knows something about this. lose a band / gain a band).

 

end of tape.  
  
  
---


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